• Blog - Kitchen

    Every once in a while…

    …I feel very domestic. 
    As in old school… starting from scratch with all basic ingredients. 
    Today was one of those days.
    I was inspired by this blog post by Krista to try making butter. 

    Into the mixer goes the heavy whipping cream…

    Several minutes of high speed mixing brought me to here…
    Notice the solids separated from the liquid….that liquid would be buttermilk. Cool huh!
     

     
     
    After draining the buttermilk off and “washing” the butter…see Krista’s recipe

      I ended up with this nice ball of butter.

    Remember the buttermilk I mentioned earlier… 
    Oh yeah..pancakes for lunch baby!
    During the midst of all that mixing I made a batch of salsa or maybe it would be pica de gallo depending on how you want to look at it.
    Aren’t veggies beautiful!?!

  • Around home - Blog - Outdoors

    Tea Tuesday: Enjoying the garden

    On yet another beautiful morning, I am having a little quiet time on the deck before diving into the day.
    Days like today remind me why we put up with the extremes of Minnesota weather.  
    We’ve been blessed with an abundant garden once I figured out how to keep the critters at bay. The fencing and the flags along with an occasional sprinkle of blood meal seem to have done the trick.
    I’ve picked a couple ice cream buckets full of green beans…  
    Enough snow peas for stir-fry and munching…

    Several big, yummy cucumbers 
    with more on the way…

    Very soon I’ll have more tomatoes than I know what to do with…
    I can’t wait!
    And by the way…
    our leaves are starting to turn… 
    just a few here and there. 
    What a short growing season!

    Drop by my friend Kimmie’s blog to see what’s going on with my tea Tuesday pals.
    What are you doing today?

  • Around home - Blog - Outdoors

    Flags and a garden update

    So I go out to check the side garden this morning and the deer have eaten the tops off my green beans and snow pea plants. Wasn’t that nice of them…pesky things.  So I decided that maybe some flags would scare them…create some movement…and generally get in the way of their snacking. Bonus…I think they look cute.  We’ll see what happens.

    The garden box is also doing very well.  There are tons of little green tomatoes on the plants. 

    Check it out … 

    Nature is funny at times.